Fixing Leopard’s ugly Menus
I am excited about Leopard, I really am. but there are also a few things that really bothered me, when i watched the WWDC coverage. things that looked like bad decisions, designwise. Andrew Escobar summed things up already and I pretty much agree with everything he said. what really bugged me though is the transparent menu bar. I mean, it was always about the legibility, after all it is a very important part of the OS, but now? it looks like somebody broke into Vista and stole the effect. and you should definitely never do that.
it seems I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the new look. the guys at Many Tricks quickly designed a little app to fix this ugly mistake. good. but not hardcore enough for me. I’m one of these people who close every program every few minutes in order to save memory and CPU processing time. learned that back on the PC when we used to play with EMS and XMS memory. fun.
so I figured the best way to solve this would be by having a manipulated background image, that just had white in the place where the menu bar would go. and it worked. no need for an extra service running in the background. a little more work at first, but I like my solution.
I also made it a simple Photoshop file so that you could fix all your background images and wallpapers.
download: my OSX Leopard non-transparent Menu Bar Photoshop Image
Responses
Now that the iphone already packs a touchscreen interface, I guess the Leopard design is the next step.
That tablet “serving” programs already makes me want to grab at the icons, and I can imagine that cover flow is even more fun if I browse through images with my index finger. The new folder icons have a paper fibers texture (see Andrew Escobars blog): Brushed steel is dead, because nobody would want to touch it. Even the shadow is now darker.
After thinking about it – and reading http://macthemes2.net/2007/06/13/renato-valdes-olmos-thoughts-on-leopard%E2%80%99s-user-interface/#more-106
, I like the transparent look. Transparency gives a 3-dimensional impression, which, in general, is good for touch screen interfaces. And it fits to the tablet on the bottom of the screen.
I remember from my touch screen course that, even if the screen really is flat, you want to give the impression that you touch into a space. This might very well be a design decision that goes in exactly that direction. Apple changes the perception of the os from flat surface to space. The transparent menu bar is only bad if the background makes it hard to read, but after all, using a background that doesn’t distract too much always was something to take into account.
Considering the history of apple, I am sure that we might see a lot of changes in that direction in the future.
wo kriegt man denn dieses frische Grashintergrunz Bild her?
das kommt als default eingestelltes wallpaper bei OSX Leopard, wenn man installiert. ich habs dir mal per mail geschickt. ist nur sau hoch aufgeloest. mach dir vielleicht ein kleines davon, dann sparst du ein bisschen resourcen. glaub ich jedenfalls. aber ich kenn mich eh nur mit EMS speicher aus :) LOL
update: als standard kommt jetzt so ein violetter weltraumhintergrund. weiss nich, ob der besser ist, als das gras. ich find die tiger wallpaper immer noch besser. so blau und abstrakt …